Multi-booting Mac Intel Developer Machines

ytsejam-ppc writes "Ross Carlson over at Jasbone.com has a great article up on how to install multiple operating systems on the new Intel based developer edition Macs. His particular setup triple-booted Mac OS X 10.4.1 (Intel), CentOS 4 and Windows XP. Just makes me drool."

Comments

Yes

[OverlordQ]

And how many of us have these developer machines?

What that? Zero . . ah ok . . .

Re:Yes

[daveschroeder]

And yet, people have them.

Further, by the end of 2007, all Macs will be Intel based (according to Apple's initial statement).

So people might care to see what types of things may, and likely will, be possible.

Especially people who might want to buy *one* machine, say, a laptop, and run Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and other x86 OSes on it, all at native speeds. And yes, one way or another, this will likely be trivially possible. See my other posts for more information.

In other words, this is very interesting to that group of people. Which, among slashdot readers, is probably quite a lot.

Yes...

[daveschroeder]

...they likely won't be using BIOS.

But if they're using EFI (a distinct possibility), it's still likely that Windows will be able to be directly installed.

And even if they make the unlikely choice of Open Firmware, that doesn't stop Windows (and any other x86 OS) from running at essentially the full speed of the native underlying hardware in a virtual machine environment that someone is bound to produce. In fact, that's likely even *more* desirable to a larger number of people than the hassle of dual booting. And a VM is possible regardless of what the boot mechanism will be.

Re:now for the real question

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it's open source doesn't make it better. I found Photoshop easy to use and powerful from the first version I worked on, 2.5 I believe. I've tinkering with Gimp and it's interesting but I'd hate to have to depend on it. My productivity would drop like a rock and most of what I depend on in Photoshop just isn't there. There's nothing wrong with Gimp if you're just tinkering for fun but it's not a serious threat for Photoshop in the pro world.

You're almost right...

[daveschroeder]

No, wait, you're not even close to being right.

First of all, Microsoft gets no revenue from every Mac sold. Because exactly zero Macs come with Office. They come with a *trial* of Office. Customers must still purchase it separately.

Second, a comparatively small number of people (mostly concentrated in business and institutional settings) will be the only people running Windows under virtualization. Some new customers will be added because of the speed, and perhaps some new-to-Mac customers because they can run Windows in addition to Mac OS X.

Third, people buy Macs because they want the Mac OS. Not because they secretly want to run Windows on Apple hardware. They're using or switching to Mac OS X because Windows is the steaming pile of dogshit that it is. Running Windows is only a necessity to run Windows software (and having access to the wide variety of commodity PC hardware). I'm not sure many people run Windows because it's the most stable, secure OS available. Not to mention that people who run Windows on an Intel-based Mac will likely be NOT dual-booting, but rather running it in virtualization, side by side with Mac OS X, and only doing it when they need to run Windows-specific software.

Lastly, your assertion that Apple would stop supporting Mac OS X is nothing short of hilarious. I don't even know how to respond to it. Apple might not be a "software company", but Mac OS X is entirely what draws people to the Mac platform. The fact that the hardware is excellently engineered is incidental. Further, if ANYTHING will transform Apple into a "software company", propelling Mac OS X into the larger world beyond Apple hardware when appropriate, it's this transition. In other words, the exact opposite of what you said.

In fact, the actual scenario is more or less the opposite of your entire post. But it was good entertainment!